Three examples of Snapchat's geolocation filters show that that they are attempting to recruit employees away from Uber. These photos were all taken in or near Uber's San Francisco headquarter with the Snapchat app. (Photo: Ryan Mac/Forbes)

Snapchat Sneakily Uses Its Own App To Poach Uber, Airbnb Engineers

(Updated with additional companies where Snapchat job geo-filters are available.)

Uber Technologies and Snapchat are among the world’s most valuable startups and have raised billions of dollars between them. Yet in spite of their mountains of cash, the two, like many in the tech industry, have run into trouble when trying to recruit top engineering talent.

Now it appears Snapchat is trying to poach workers from Uber using a creative strategy built into its own app.

A source who works in Uber’s headquarter buildings in San Francisco noticed a new geolocation filter when using Snapchat on Wednesday, which showed an attempt by Snapchat to recruit Uber employees. “This place driving you mad?” read the filter, which can be applied to Snapchat photos before a user sends a disappearing message to friends. The photo filter, which can only be found if a user is in the vicinity of Uber headquarters, also shows a web address to Snapchat’s jobs page and drawings of Snapchat’s trademark ghost driving a cab while making frustrated and sad faces.

“They're a unique and playful form of recruiting,” said Snapchat spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker, adding that "a handful" of locations feature the geo-filters, which are only accessible to people within the app, swiping for filters.

A spokesperson for Uber did not respond to a request for comment.

Snapchat’s attempts to use its own app with locale-specific features to recruit from an individual firm is unusual, but not entirely unexpected in an industry where companies are battling for a scarce number of qualified workers with technology degrees. For years, Silicon Valley companies have attempted to outdo one another with perks like free lunches, free transportation and lucrative pre-IPO stock options.

"It's extremely hard for these companies to find good engineering talent," said Charlie Guo, a former entrepreneur who now consults for various tech companies. "The best way to find good people is often referrals. Obviously if you take two startups and they're both founded by Stanford grads, you know their channels are probably competing."

Recruiting through one’s own service using geotargetting, however, could be a first. FORBES visited Uber’s headquarter to try and find the filter and was successful on several attempts. The filter can be accessed after taking a photo through Snapchat and swiping through various other overlays, but can only be found if a user is in certain parts of Uber’s headquarter building in downtown San Francisco. Snapchat is based in Los Angeles but has been known to recruit employees from the Bay Area and move them to Southern California.

“Geo-filters are special overlays for Snaps that can only be accessed in certain locations,” reads Snapchat’s description of the feature. “Simply choose the geographic area you want your filter to be available in and upload an image asset. All images must be original artwork and have to be approved by the Snapchat team.” What’s interesting is that Snapchat and Uber are by no means competitors, with the former maintaining a messaging service that is popular with teens while the latter has the world’s leading ride-hailing app. The two companies also share investors in Benchmark Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, though that apparently hasn’t stopped Snapchat from going after Uber’s employees.

This isn’t the first time that Uber has found itself in a hiring kerfuffle, though this time it finds itself on the receiving end. Last year, the company was found to be recruiting Lyft drivers by having recruits book rides through their competitor’s app and then pitching them the benefits of Uber during their drive. Uber employees were also reportedly booking drivers through Lyft and then canceling rides intentionally to make the passenger pick-up experience worse.

Hiring competition is by no means limited to Snapchat, which is rumored to be raising at a $19 billion valuation, or Uber, which is worth more than $40 billion after its latest investment round. Snapchat's recruitment geo-filters are also present at Airbnb, Twitter and Pinterest offices in San Francisco, FORBES learned Thursday. At Airbnb headquarters, FORBES saw a filter reading "Not Sleeping Well?", featuring a scared ghost in a bed, surrounded by floating sheep. A filter available at Twitter shows a ghost wearing what appears to be a halo with angel wings below the phrase "Fly Higher!", a Twitter employee tweeted, adding "nice try." A Pinterest employee shared a filter reading "Feeling Pinned Down?," showing a distressed ghost next to falling bowling pins. The employee tweeted a screenshot of his response to Snapchat, a snap of the filter with the reply, "No."

“We’re pulling people from each other,” said Haseeb Budhani, CEO of Soha Systems. “This is a closed system at the end of the day. We all struggle with this. All of us spend a good 30 some percent of our time just hiring people, and it shouldn’t be this hard.”